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What do you think was an underrated powerset, whether it be usefulness, or how often you saw it?

I think that Earth Control wasn't very popular. I thought it was very helpful at helping the tank stay alive with Earthquake and Volcanic Gases (Area Hold) seemed felt like it did more than some of the other area holds.

Force Fields was another set I thought was a bit underused and underrated. Dispersion Bubble and the Deflection/Insulation Shield made great Defense buffs. I think some people steered clear because of Force Bubble. I thought that if they decreased the range of it, it could have been way better to let the Melee fighters do their stuff and let the Ranged and Support players stay safe from mobs

Quote from: Charged Mastermind on July 17, 2014, 02:06:04 AM
What do you think was an underrated powerset, whether it be usefulness, or how often you saw it?

I think that Earth Control wasn't very popular. I thought it was very helpful at helping the tank stay alive with Earthquake and Volcanic Gases (Area Hold) seemed felt like it did more than some of the other area holds.

Dark Blast. It's usefulness at making some other low-defense sets work was not usually appreciated.

I also liked some combinations of sets that were otherwise weak... Poison is a pretty weak set, but it worked well with Illusion. An every-spawn AoE Hold to set up Containment is exactly what Illusion is missing, and it can be slotted with damage-Proc IOs to add AoE damage, another thing that Illusion is missing.

Quote from: Charged Mastermind on July 17, 2014, 02:06:04 AM
What do you think was an underrated powerset, whether it be usefulness, or how often you saw it?

I think that Earth Control wasn't very popular. I thought it was very helpful at helping the tank stay alive with Earthquake and Volcanic Gases (Area Hold) seemed felt like it did more than some of the other area holds.

Force Fields was another set I thought was a bit underused and underrated. Dispersion Bubble and the Deflection/Insulation Shield made great Defense buffs. I think some people steered clear because of Force Bubble. I thought that if they decreased the range of it, it could have been way better to let the Melee fighters do their stuff and let the Ranged and Support players stay safe from mobs

One of my favorite characters was a Earth/Kinetic Controller (Geokin). With a good hold strategy, he could easily solo through the worst that either the Carnies or Malta had to dish out. It was kind of impressive watching an entire spawn either standing still or falling down while my little "stoner" ran around on speed boost and fulcrum shift, beating the snot out of them.

Energy Melee.  While I'm aware of the weaknesses in the set, it is a single-target damage and stun monster.  I'm pretty sure Energy Transfer is the most powerful single-target attack a player can get.  Maybe it was due to me playing solo most of the time, but I didn't mind the slow animations or weak AoE, not when I could hit enemies with the 3.56 scale (with guaranteed Mag 3 Stun) Total Focus or the 4.56 scale (with 60% Mag 3 Stun chance) Energy Transfer.  (Her name wasn't "Ms. Stungun" for nothing.  She was almost always surrounded by enemies, even Bosses, staggering about in a daze)

My biggest problem with that character was actually her secondary, Energy Aura.  She never felt as sturdy as my other Brutes.  If I were remaking her today I'd probably give her a different secondary.

(Also, one of the last characters I ever made in the game was an Earth/Ice Dominator.  She was fantastic.  She gave me great appreciation for location-targeted effects, and I loved her pet.  I made her after the announcement, and still got her to 50+2 before the game closed)

Ninjas...
I always saw people going on about how fragile and difficult to control the pets were, and how awful the set was in comparison to bots or demons.

I liked introducing those people to Hanano, my GM-hunting Ninja/FF MM. She wasn't one of those indestructible uber-toons like the min/maxers always bragged about, but she and the boys could hold their own. They in no way "sucked".

Mercs. As irritating as the Medic could be (thinking he was a melee combatant), having two Tier-2 pets with a fricking SNIPE attack was GOLD.

And after I paired this with Trick Arrow (another totally undervalued set), not to mention that I'd slotted all my pets for Debuff, holy crap could they shred a target like a block of cheese.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Quote from: Thunder Glove on July 17, 2014, 02:18:32 PM
Energy Melee.  While I'm aware of the weaknesses in the set, it is a single-target damage and stun monster.  I'm pretty sure Energy Transfer is the most powerful single-target attack a player can get.  Maybe it was due to me playing solo most of the time, but I didn't mind the slow animations or weak AoE, not when I could hit enemies with the 3.56 scale (with guaranteed Mag 3 Stun) Total Focus or the 4.56 scale (with 60% Mag 3 Stun chance) Energy Transfer.  (Her name wasn't "Ms. Stungun" for nothing.  She was almost always surrounded by enemies, even Bosses, staggering about in a daze)

My biggest problem with that character was actually her secondary, Energy Aura.  She never felt as sturdy as my other Brutes.  If I were remaking her today I'd probably give her a different secondary.

(Also, one of the last characters I ever made in the game was an Earth/Ice Dominator.  She was fantastic.  She gave me great appreciation for location-targeted effects, and I loved her pet.  I made her after the announcement, and still got her to 50+2 before the game closed)

Talk about over nerfing a set and never fixing that was EM the tankers and brutes got a raw deal

I also think some of the sort of support-damage powersets (like Ice Blast) were underrated because a good chunk of mobs had resistance's to them. I only made one Ice Blaster and he made mobs so much slower because of the Slow effect on the recharge and running speed.

Yeah I have to agree energy melee was a tough one for me.  At lower levels the damage didn't seem comparable to other melee sets which made leveling tough.

I really liked Earth control and had a level 50 earth/storm controller.  It was a fun character to play.

The reason earth control wasn't very popular is because it fought itself. The immobilize and area immobilize attacks gave 10000% knock resist, yet it's possibly most useful ability was the thing that kept knocking people down. I can't be certain, but i think ice control had the same problem.

Now on to the topic: I think archery was very underrated. My first 50 was Fairy Archer, an archery/devices blaster. With stealth i could set up a time bomb, count the seconds, and top it off with rain of arrows followed by torrent. Rain had a 60 second reuse, so i could use my ultimate SUPER often. It was immensely fun and very damaging.

Poison secondary didn't get much love, even though it housed some of the most vicious debuffs for single target ever. Poison let loose on a boss, and it was weaker than a leutenant.

Besides those i can't really remember much. I played controllers almost exclusively and rarely wound up in a group with other controllers. I also used most of the sets so i don't know what most people liked about them.

I thought earth control went pretty well with storm as the immobilize allowed me to keep the foes together while I unleashed tornado on them.

Another set I had issues with was radiation blast.  It looked great but the damage seemed low to me, at least that was my impression at the lower levels.  I never got around to fully exploring the set due to that.

posion set especially mastermind,

earth control

Energy melee outside the Stalker.

Ice Blast on blaster


Very under rated and ones I commonly see questioned as "Why did you pick that? Such and such set is better you just "gimped" yourself."  Well until they see how the person with said "gimped" build save the self appointed judge's oh so uber toon's bacon and or smash everything with ease while they face plant.

Quote from: fearalice on July 17, 2014, 06:59:08 PM
The reason earth control wasn't very popular is because it fought itself. The immobilize and area immobilize attacks gave 10000% knock resist, yet it's possibly most useful ability was the thing that kept knocking people down. I can't be certain, but i think ice control had the same problem.

Now on to the topic: I think archery was very underrated. My first 50 was Fairy Archer, an archery/devices blaster. With stealth i could set up a time bomb, count the seconds, and top it off with rain of arrows followed by torrent. Rain had a 60 second reuse, so i could use my ultimate SUPER often. It was immensely fun and very damaging.

Poison secondary didn't get much love, even though it housed some of the most vicious debuffs for single target ever. Poison let loose on a boss, and it was weaker than a leutenant.

Besides those i can't really remember much. I played controllers almost exclusively and rarely wound up in a group with other controllers. I also used most of the sets so i don't know what most people liked about them.

Poison was a awesome AV killer as well. I had a friend who used it on my shard mission to find the well. Lets just say possessed Hero 1 didn't last long at all .

Quote from: fearalice on July 17, 2014, 06:59:08 PM
The reason earth control wasn't very popular is because it fought itself. The immobilize and area immobilize attacks gave 10000% knock resist, yet it's possibly most useful ability was the thing that kept knocking people down. I can't be certain, but i think ice control had the same problem.

Ice Control did have that problem big-time, because it really didn't have much control if you took away Ice Slick's knockdown. Ice Control was still a very usable set IF (and pretty much only if) you paired it with a strong To-Hit debuff secondary like Rad, Dark, Time, or Nature. Then you could use the AoE Immob, put the To-Hit debuff on the mobs (or run into them if you used Time), throw Shiver in there, and the mobs rarely attacked, very rarely hit, for limited damage, and you had an AoE heal. Basically, you would allow them to attack but completely cripple their DPS. But without that, it was really weak since without a To Hit debuff, using the AoE Immob drew aggro, and -Recharge doesn't help when the mobs open up on you and kill you with their first 1-2 salvos.

Earth Control, however, did not have the same problem for a couple of reasons:
1: Its primary AoE control was an AoE stun, so losing the Knockdown didn't hurt it that much
2: Earthquake had a sizable (-10 enhanceable) To Hit debuff, so if you slotted it for -ToHit, you'd open up with a -15% To Hit debuff Knockdown patch. It also lowered Defense by 10% base, so you could open with EQ to limit the incoming fire, then hit with Stalagmites using EQ's -Defense debuff, and only then use Stone Cages. By the time that you negate EQ's Knockdown, the mobs are both debuffed and Stunned. And with the recharges on those powers, at higher levels the combo was usable pretty much every fight.

Quote from: blacksly on July 17, 2014, 11:09:13 PM
By the time that you negate EQ's Knockdown, the mobs are both debuffed and Stunned.

This is the main problem i saw with it sadly. To me it's just bad design to make powers within the same set render other powers (or even certain aspects of them) useless. Just something to consider really if development on this game continues when/if it is revived.

claws,

i don't know all that lingo that makes it good but it's really really good

Water blast.


Color that crap green, you got yourself a radioactive monster.

Quote from: fearalice on July 18, 2014, 12:06:53 AM
This is the main problem i saw with it sadly. To me it's just bad design to make powers within the same set render other powers (or even certain aspects of them) useless. Just something to consider really if development on this game continues when/if it is revived.

I agree, it was bad design. Electric's synergy with an AoE Immob that doesn't prevent Knockdowns, plus a Knockdown power, plus the fact that the AoE Immob deliberately only did one tick of damage so it wouldn't constantly break the Sleep field's control, was properly done.

But even with bad design, Earth had so much control/debuff that it easily withstood losing the Knockdown effect of Earthquake. OTOH, Ice did not... Ice needed to use Ice Slick as a backup control against additional spawns, while using debuff-based "control" on its main spawns, just because its Immobilize blocked its Knockdowns.

It may seem funky but I actually didn't see many Fire Blasters when I was playing on Victory. Yeah it was resistable by a good chunk of mobs and especially some arch-villains but at the same time it had absurdly good DoT whenever I used it

Quote from: blacksly on July 18, 2014, 01:44:45 AM
I agree, it was bad design. Electric's synergy with an AoE Immob that doesn't prevent Knockdowns, plus a Knockdown power, plus the fact that the AoE Immob deliberately only did one tick of damage so it wouldn't constantly break the Sleep field's control, was properly done.

But even with bad design, Earth had so much control/debuff that it easily withstood losing the Knockdown effect of Earthquake. OTOH, Ice did not... Ice needed to use Ice Slick as a backup control against additional spawns, while using debuff-based "control" on its main spawns, just because its Immobilize blocked its Knockdowns.

I managed to make Ice work with Weather control, despite it seemingly being a very awkward combo. Didn't bother with the immobs just sent things flying all over the place and bouncing around.

As you said earth had more than enough control to not need the knockdown (especially as I paired it with rad)

Was Sonic Control underrated? I don't remember teaming up with many outside of mine (who I ran all the way to 50 as part of a SG weekly team event, we just cut through everything)

I think actually quite a lot of defenders powersets, and maybe defenders in general were underrated but the fastest ever TFs I've done were with 8 man defender groups.

Sonic was not so much underRATED as disliked by a lot of players. The graphics were not really interesting, the sounds were annoying, and the gameplay with it was largely boring. It was effective but boring, much like Force Fields. So the Sonics that you see would be effective, but you wouldn't see many of them.

Quote from: Charged Mastermind on July 18, 2014, 01:54:26 AM
It may seem funky but I actually didn't see many Fire Blasters when I was playing on Victory. Yeah it was resistable by a good chunk of mobs and especially some arch-villains but at the same time it had absurdly good DoT whenever I used it

I actually had a Fire/Fire/Fire blaster on Victory. I never really noticed him having a rough time with mobs... except when the DoT stole aggro from the Tanks. Always had to make sure the Tank was paying attention because one fireball and... BOOM! The whole mob is after you.

Quote from: Mouse-Man on July 18, 2014, 03:04:15 PM
I actually had a Fire/Fire/Fire blaster on Victory. I never really noticed him having a rough time with mobs... except when the DoT stole aggro from the Tanks. Always had to make sure the Tank was paying attention because one fireball and... BOOM! The whole mob is after you.

yeah if you unleashed an AoE that DoT'd for a while the Tank seemed nonexistent to some baddies

Quote from: Waffles on July 18, 2014, 01:18:11 AM
Water blast.


Color that crap green, you got yourself a radioactive monster.

Color it brown and you have some serious digestive problems.

Quote from: Thunder Glove on July 17, 2014, 02:18:32 PM
Energy Melee.  While I'm aware of the weaknesses in the set, it is a single-target damage and stun monster.  I'm pretty sure Energy Transfer is the most powerful single-target attack a player can get.  Maybe it was due to me playing solo most of the time, but I didn't mind the slow animations or weak AoE, not when I could hit enemies with the 3.56 scale (with guaranteed Mag 3 Stun) Total Focus or the 4.56 scale (with 60% Mag 3 Stun chance) Energy Transfer.  (Her name wasn't "Ms. Stungun" for nothing.  She was almost always surrounded by enemies, even Bosses, staggering about in a daze)

My biggest problem with that character was actually her secondary, Energy Aura.  She never felt as sturdy as my other Brutes.  If I were remaking her today I'd probably give her a different secondary.

(Also, one of the last characters I ever made in the game was an Earth/Ice Dominator.  She was fantastic.  She gave me great appreciation for location-targeted effects, and I loved her pet.  I made her after the announcement, and still got her to 50+2 before the game closed)

I played an Energy/Energy blaster (my first 50), and the combination of knockback and stun meant you could play it like a scrapper, and just keep mobs either on their butts or staggering around like idiots until you finish them off. Fun like juggling chainsaws.

As for the original question, of all the power sets I took to at least 30, I'd say Mind Control was the most underrated. I don't remember if Xophia was Mind/Rad or Mind/Kin but she was one or the other.

Levitate made me chuckle every time I used it, and Telekinesis often made me laugh out loud at the bad guys bobbing along the walls toward the nearest corner.

Quote from: chuckv3 on July 18, 2014, 06:56:05 PM
As for the original question, of all the power sets I took to at least 30, I'd say Mind Control was the most underrated. I don't remember if Xophia was Mind/Rad or Mind/Kin but she was one or the other.

Levitate made me chuckle every time I used it, and Telekinesis often made me laugh out loud at the bad guys bobbing along the walls toward the nearest corner.

My first 50 was a Mind/Kin controller. I think mind wasnt used much because you had to gut to 32 or 34 before the benefits of that power really started to shine. Dont get me wrong, I loved Mind/ Love it to death . But you really had no real good AOE's till mid-late game . Now past 32 or 34 .. Well that's when the fun started with mind  ;D

 after 8 years of playing almost everything.. I cant really think of anything that was underrated to me. Underrated means something that very good that should have been rated higher..

not something I didnt see everyone on the planet playing.. im a game where you have people spread across multiple servers with tons of alts.. you probably are seeing a snapshot every time you play and never the whole picture..

Quote from: Samuraiko on July 17, 2014, 05:31:33 PM
Mercs. As irritating as the Medic could be (thinking he was a melee combatant), having two Tier-2 pets with a fricking SNIPE attack was GOLD.

And after I paired this with Trick Arrow (another totally undervalued set), not to mention that I'd slotted all my pets for Debuff, holy crap could they shred a target like a block of cheese.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Yeah, having pets with sniper... Playing STO the lat few months and learning to finetune control over my boffs has given me a new appreciation of MM I never had before. I've come to dearly love sending a pet in to plant mines or morters before casually strolling to a trigger point and brinnging on a hellstorm. 8)

Quote from: blacksly on July 18, 2014, 03:00:46 PM
Sonic was not so much underRATED as disliked by a lot of players. The graphics were not really interesting, the sounds were annoying, and the gameplay with it was largely boring. It was effective but boring, much like Force Fields. So the Sonics that you see would be effective, but you wouldn't see many of them.

Yeah, that always bugged me about sonic... it was highly effective, but at the same time highly annoying (particularly at halloween since so many of the monsters used the same sounders so you couldn't tell if you were hearing a baddie or just some chucklehead setting off their powers)

Now that I think about it, in hindsight The Warshade was pretty underrepresented. So, technically that counts.

For myself, I would say ice/storm troller. To me it was very weak despite ice having the best holds in the game.

generally I hate replying to my own posts, but did anyone find Traps to be useful? Triage Beacon and Acid Mortar seem like they would be amazing at debuff and support

Nobody said it?

Ok, I'll do it.

Brawl.  Totally underrated.  Especially six slotted and franken-io'd and stuff.

Quote from: Charged Mastermind on July 20, 2014, 04:29:33 AM
generally I hate replying to my own posts, but did anyone find Traps to be useful? Triage Beacon and Acid Mortar seem like they would be amazing at debuff and support

Triage Beacon was OK, nothing spectacular, and overwhelmed by AoE heals such as Twilight Grasp.

However Acid Mortar was literally the bomb! Let that puppy go and draw a little aggro, and unload on the debuffed and momentarily-distracted spawn! It was great on my Robots/Traps MM and my DP/Traps Corruptor.

Oh, Charged Mastermind, I hope you're happy - this thread has me designing and tweaking builds in Mids as much as I used to do when CoX was live...  :P

I loved my Earth Melee/Regen brute. The stuns and knockup brought to the table by Earth, gave you time to use your numerous clicky heals, and Regen had a low cost on your endurance allowing for Earth to spam toyour heart's content. But Tremor alone really is the power I loved, throwing enemies into the air all around you.

Quote from: wyldhunt on July 20, 2014, 06:39:15 PM
Triage Beacon was OK, nothing spectacular, and overwhelmed by AoE heals such as Twilight Grasp.

However Acid Mortar was literally the bomb! Let that puppy go and draw a little aggro, and unload on the debuffed and momentarily-distracted spawn! It was great on my Robots/Traps MM and my DP/Traps Corruptor.

Oh, Charged Mastermind, I hope you're happy - this thread has me designing and tweaking builds in Mids as much as I used to do when CoX was live...  :P

lol. I'm not sure if I am happy about that or not. I was just curious because now I want to make a Robots/Traps MM if it comes back

I had a Thugs/Traps MM.  More fragile than Bots/Traps, but makes up for it with damage output.

Quote from: Thunder Glove on July 27, 2014, 01:23:19 PM
I had a Thugs/Traps MM.  More fragile than Bots/Traps, but makes up for it with damage output.

I had a Thugs/Traps. It didnt seem any more fragile to me than the Bots.. in fact it was one set that allowed me to slot every defensive IO for a MM/Pet Class in the game.. If I remember correctly with the FF generator and the defense buffs from the Second Thugs..they were At or near the soft cap..

I never tried Bots/Traps.. I had a Bots/FF that basically was a tank..

You remember correctly, My thug/trap mastermind only needed the defense IOs for his minions, and if they were in the forcefield they were essentially untouchable. One of the strongest builds, in that it isn't really that reliant on IOs to bring down the house.

/Devices on a blaster, after the Smoke Grenade nerf.

I had a Dual Pistol/Devices blaster and the fun you could have with Cloaking Device, Smoke Grenade, Trip Mines and Caltrops, mixed with the solid AoE of Pistols made for an amusing 'dicking around' setup.  Plus, Executioner's Shot with standard ammo as a finisher never got old to me. :)

This may be a personal thing, but I felt that Stone Armour on a tanker was underrated.  Not Granite Armour, Stone Armour, the rest of the set.  My Stone/Fire tanker used Granite purely as a panic button.  And since my favourite pastime with him was hunting Carnies, it wasn't even a very useful panic button, given all the psi damage.  Stomping around as a tiny agglomeration of all the toggles who just happened as a result, to be almost totally immune to the 40 or so Carnies that were stood around him being toasted to a crisp was just amusing as hell and cathartic payback for all the pain Carnies caused my other alts over the years.

'What's that dear, you're trying to drain my endurance?  Sorry, Rooted, Crystal Armour and Minerals mean that's not going to be happening, and even if you do hit me with a drain, I've got Conserve Energy in reserve...'

(the Crystal armour NE +def meant that Dark Ring Mistresses very rarely managed to hit with Mask of Vitiation, Minerals meant that Psychic Visage from all the carnies being defeated around me rarely hit, and Rooted meant that any that did hit had next to no effect.)

*/fire manipulation blasters.

Area Damage was out of this world, faceplant bait but it helps to have teammates.  ;) 

Quote from: Mistress Urd on July 27, 2014, 10:59:55 PM
*/fire manipulation blasters.

Area Damage was out of this world, faceplant bait but it helps to have teammates.  ;)

My Rad/Fire nods in approval... put some IO's in that build.. Soft Capped to S/L/E/N... wade right in the middle of a mob and go to town..

I liked my level 50 Earth/Storm controller.  When I used earthquake I generally used freezing rain and quicksand with it instead of the immobilize.  When I did immobilize (stone cages) it was when using stalagmites to disorient.  Plus you have volcanic gasses to overlap on either if needed.  With those controls and the earth pet, tornado and lightning storm for damage it was fun to play.  At higher levels I chose fire for the ancillary pool so I had fireball to lob at groups as well.  It all went great with the theme of the character as a CoT member that turned away from villainy to become a hero.  Mystic Elementalist was the name I gave him.  I'd attach a picture of him but I never could figure out how to do that on this site...

Quote from: HEATSTROKE on July 29, 2014, 02:03:37 AM
My Rad/Fire nods in approval... put some IO's in that build.. Soft Capped to S/L/E/N... wade right in the middle of a mob and go to town..

Still, when you are IO'ed to the point of soft capped defenses on a blaster, your pretty much always going to have a good time of it. Rad/Fire had that nice irradiate AOE to warm them up too. Shiny zero defensesesseses make for TOAST!

I'd agree that 'Stone Armour' as a set was under-rated. You see people driving around almost constantly in granite but the multiple toggle defenses could handle things quite well without resorting to granite and being (nearly) dependent on a kin.

Hearing everyone saying they didn't really like Dual Pistols, I thought that it was a very good powerset. The animations weren't vague and boring, the sounds were brisk and clear (not at all annoying), and the Swap Ammo was (in my opinion) a very handy tool if your team lacked either DPS, Defense Debuff, or something to slow the enemies down.

Quote from: Charged Mastermind on July 17, 2014, 02:06:04 AM
What do you think was an underrated powerset, whether it be usefulness, or how often you saw it?
Force Fields was another set I thought was a bit underused and underrated.

Agree. Force Fields was actually my first toon. I'm all about defense, so was an ALMOST a perfect fit for me. The problem for me is that I like a good balance of solo and group play, and it was down right painful soloing some content as a FF def. I eventually migrated to Stone Tank and never looked back.

A couple people said "Mind Control", and yeah, it was very under-vauled... However, it was VERY useful in Hamidon raids. Its attacks weren't flagged as either ranged or melee, which allowed my Mind/Kin to help out against ANY of the mitos if we were short on ranged or melee attackers. There were a couple other small things, but that's the big thing that always made me smug when arguments about its uselessness broke out.

Quote from: Charged Mastermind on July 29, 2014, 06:41:51 PM
Hearing everyone saying they didn't really like Dual Pistols, I thought that it was a very good powerset. The animations weren't vague and boring, the sounds were brisk and clear (not at all annoying), and the Swap Ammo was (in my opinion) a very handy tool if your team lacked either DPS, Defense Debuff, or something to slow the enemies down.

Could not agree more... Dual Pistols could turn anyone into a one-toon swiss army knife, particularly when you slotting in a lot of range or acc

Quote from: emperorsteele on July 29, 2014, 10:39:58 PM
A couple people said "Mind Control", and yeah, it was very under-vauled... However, it was VERY useful in Hamidon raids. Its attacks weren't flagged as either ranged or melee, which allowed my Mind/Kin to help out against ANY of the mitos if we were short on ranged or melee attackers. There were a couple other small things, but that's the big thing that always made me smug when arguments about its uselessness broke out.

Well it didn't have a pet, confusion was not to everyone's taste and people tended fuck sleep control up faster then you could say... Pepsi sucks. It was still a damn fine powerset, with pretty respectable damage outputs if you wanted to solo.

Quote from: Charged Mastermind on July 29, 2014, 06:41:51 PM
Hearing everyone saying they didn't really like Dual Pistols, I thought that it was a very good powerset. The animations weren't vague and boring, the sounds were brisk and clear (not at all annoying), and the Swap Ammo was (in my opinion) a very handy tool if your team lacked either DPS, Defense Debuff, or something to slow the enemies down.

I loved pistols, I really liked the animations and the fast turnaround mini-nova. I had a Pistol/Storm corruptor and he was oodles of fun. Like any set that lacked an 'Aim' you missed that extra kick when you needed it but I thought it was more then serviceable. I wish I had more time to play it.

 Had a DP/Time corruptor.. and he was very very good..

Quote from: emperorsteele on July 29, 2014, 10:39:58 PM
A couple people said "Mind Control", and yeah, it was very under-vauled... However, it was VERY useful in Hamidon raids. Its attacks weren't flagged as either ranged or melee, which allowed my Mind/Kin to help out against ANY of the mitos if we were short on ranged or melee attackers. There were a couple other small things, but that's the big thing that always made me smug when arguments about its uselessness broke out.

I figure this is appropriate and I hope you don't mind me posting your guild.  Also, hello :)

https://web.archive.org/web/20120904202924/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=122388

And I have to agree, mind/ controllers may have been underrated but they were awesome.  Mass Confusion was ridiculously powerful. .   

Quote from: Charged Mastermind on July 29, 2014, 06:41:51 PM
Hearing everyone saying they didn't really like Dual Pistols, I thought that it was a very good powerset. The animations weren't vague and boring, the sounds were brisk and clear (not at all annoying), and the Swap Ammo was (in my opinion) a very handy tool if your team lacked either DPS, Defense Debuff, or something to slow the enemies down.

I liked the set well enough... But IMO the animations were TOO not generic to the point where some character concepts were simply not compatible with the set.

I went with someone who was part crazy anyway, so it worked alright.

Quote from: Mistress Urd on July 27, 2014, 10:59:55 PM
*/fire manipulation blasters.

Area Damage was out of this world, faceplant bait but it helps to have teammates.  ;)

Sorry - but there's no chance many people think anything fire is underrated. Fire is awesomeness.

I think ice was seriously underrated in blasters and controllers. Particularly controllers. Maybe earth controllers, too.

I really enjoyed my earth/rad troller. I liked my ice/empath, too. But if I get the opportunity, one of my next five toons is going to be an earth/kin. It never occurred to me to use sb on a pet, for some reason. Maybe a fire/kin, too - but I think there's already a zillion of those.

Way back in the day, I had read @olepi's guide to ice blasting and through his/her passion, really saw the thrill of all things ice. I loved being able to practically one-shot minions with BIB.

Making an ice/empath controller was a hoot, but I'm so not going empath for a secondary again. Useful stuff, but boring for my playstyle.

Sonic/Ice blasters.

I could chain sleep bosses and in some cases even AV's! I had -def attacks and a group knockback (with the right IO - knockdown). Ice patch and so many good powers. I used to run mine at +4 x 8 solo.

I tanked Recluse once when our tank went down. I was able to pull him off the rest of the team, then debuff and slow him enough with all my controls that I survived until the tank was rezzed and back in the game. Then I stuck with the tank until we wiped him out and the tank never dropped again.

Aggro an extra group? No problem - drop snowstorm and keep knocking them down and chain sleep them untill they die.

I'd like to nominate both Elec armor and Elec melee. About a year before CoH closed down I made an Elec/Elec scrapper, and he ended up becoming one of my most fun and powerful characters.

Elec melee was underrated because most people thought it had poor single target damage. This was definitely not true. It didn't have any big hitters like most sets did, but it had a very solid and fast attack chain. Overall I don't think it was any slower - it would just take like 6 fast attacks to kill someone instead of 3 slow attacks. And then it had Lighting Rod, perhaps the most fun power in the entire game. Seriously, every time I used LR, I smiled. It was incredible.

Elec armor was underrated too, but I'm not sure why. I very rarely saw anybody playing it, but it was very survivable and offered literally unlimited endurance. My elec/elec scrapper was probably my only toon where endurance basically didn't exist, like it wasn't even part of the game. No matter what, I knew that I'd never run out, and after playing so many scrappers with insane endurance issues, this was definitely a rewarding experience.

Quote from: Supermax on August 02, 2014, 12:12:51 AM

Elec armor was underrated too, but I'm not sure why. I very rarely saw anybody playing it, but it was very survivable and offered literally unlimited endurance. My elec/elec scrapper was probably my only toon where endurance basically didn't exist, like it wasn't even part of the game. No matter what, I knew that I'd never run out, and after playing so many scrappers with insane endurance issues, this was definitely a rewarding experience.

\

I didn't really use Electric Armor because it had no resistance to Toxic damage and the Vahzilok were almost pure toxic damage. Other than I completely agree

Quote from: Charged Mastermind on August 02, 2014, 12:56:04 AM
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I didn't really use Electric Armor because it had no resistance to Toxic damage and the Vahzilok were almost pure toxic damage. Other than I completely agree

What the charged one said. I had little use for Elec Armor because I was an altaholic and always dealing with vazis... but definitely right about it being a speed set

Eoraptor, Charged Mastermind, may I direct your attention to here (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,9810.msg141746.html#msg141746)? Please peruse The Amber Fist's build - my actual in-game build at shutdown, and my first fully-incarnated character, advanced within a few weeks after each incarnate content expansion was released. Yes, notice only 9.7% Toxic resist. However, many non-Vahzilok Toxic attacks also include Lethal or Smashing, so please note the 45.2% Def to S/L. No, no DDR, but then please note the Regen/Healing/HP available. Then pair it with the KB from the Stone Melee (supported by the End tools in ElecArmor). Yes, the Vahzilok missions in Faultine were interesting, but doable (it's hard to vomit when you're KB'd). Later on I took The Amber Fist through many Arachnos and Arachnoid missions with nary a hiccup. If built in certain ways and with certain powerset combos, ElecArmor was a king of layered mitigation, and had some nice QoL too.

Supermax, the reason some min-maxers gave me as to why ElecArmor wasn't as good: "it's pure resist, and will get creamed without Def to back it up." That could be true, which is why I IO'd for S/L Def softcap, and paired it with Stone Melee (a set seemingly tailor-made for ElecArmor). There were some other ElecArmor believers as well - I saw them on the forums and in-game. I also liked Elec Melee, however I never quite got an Armor to gel well with it - maybe I'll try again next chance we get (keeping up hope!).

Quote from: Charged Mastermind on August 02, 2014, 12:56:04 AM
\

I didn't really use Electric Armor because it had no resistance to Toxic damage and the Vahzilok were almost pure toxic damage. Other than I completely agree

Technically it had solid resistance to Toxic in its tier 9, though if your problem was vaz, that still woulnd't help you since they were an earlier enemy group. You could also slot Power Sink such that you could drain the crud out of toxic dealers, even more quickly if paired with elec melee.

Elec armor got a bad rap because for a long time it did not have energize (the heal), and as a set with no defense using the interruptible aid self was problematic. After Energize, slap some defense on an Elec build and it became one of the strongest sets out there.

Elec melee, I played on stalkers so I never felt the lack of single target damage.

Quote from: wyldhunt on August 02, 2014, 03:53:33 AM
Supermax, the reason some min-maxers gave me as to why ElecArmor wasn't as good: "it's pure resist, and will get creamed without Def to back it up."

Hehe, guess they weren't very good min/maxers :)

It was a lot easier to add significant defense to a res powerset than it was to add significant resistance to a def powerset. Fire Armor is an almost identical set - also res based, with a single heal, a damage aura, and some unique tools. And guess what, it was the most popular min/max powerset by far.

I think Microcosm is right. Fire armor had been around since the start, so everybody knew how good it was. Elec came years later and didn't have energize, so it was clearly much worse. Once energize was added, I guess not enough people decided to give it a second try.

Energy blast...Sajaana actually got kicked out of groups when people found out she had energy blast.  They thought energy blast would knock off their aggro.  And for someone who would use energy haphazardly, this was true.

But I can't tell you how many tankers, scrappers, stalkers and brutes I saved over the years with those energy blast powers.  If they are swamped, a quick energy torrent or power push will give them some breathing room so they can get healed.  And there's nothing better than to knock some Harlequin Fencer off of some poor blaster or dominator who is getting sliced up at close range.  Energy blast can be a group saver.

Read some mentions of /Traps.  My bots/traps MM worked just fine.  It was fun and fit the character concept.

Does anyone have an opinion on Traps as a primary for Defenders?  If we get back into the game, I think I want to re-roll one character as Traps/Beam.  It would be a fun concept but it seems like an odd primary and I don't want to find out too late.  It does not have to be uber, just viable.

Traps is uber.

Not so much on teams, actually... the playstyle doesn't work as well into teams, and the timing for some of the powers is not very good for fast-rolling teams (although, at that point, it doesn't greatly matter), but it's still decent on teams. It provides AoE Defense and Status Protection as defensive stats, Caltrops to keep enemies away from the squishies at the rear, the Suicide Drones as enemy debuffs, and Acid Mortar to increase damage. Not as good a suite of tools as some of the other sets, and not as convenient to use.

But for soloing, it's one of the best buff/debuff sets. You control the timing and setup, getting Status Protection is great for soloing squishies (and with good +Def also), and Acid Mortar is a lot more useful when soloing since it has a small AoE so it works better on smaller spawns, and it can be slotted with Damage Procs for more damage, but the damage is pretty much inconsequential on teams. Poison Trap is also not much use on teams, but superb when soloing (and it enables you to solo AVs relatively easily).

Quote from: wyldhunt on August 02, 2014, 03:53:33 AM


The reason some min-maxers gave me as to why ElecArmor wasn't as good: "it's pure resist, and will get creamed without Def to back it up."

To this I say ballocks...

I played an Electric Armor/SS Tank and I didnt build for defense at all.. could have.. didnt.. and even without defense backing it up it was one of the most survivable tanks I had.. My favorite moment on a 16 man BAF.. everyone wiped except me..

Me.. Nightstar, Seige and the 9CUs.. and I lived just fine...

Now maybe thats because my build had Perma Energize.. and I could time Power Surge really well..

Quote from: Thunder Glove on July 17, 2014, 02:18:32 PM
Energy Melee.  While I'm aware of the weaknesses in the set, it is a single-target damage and stun monster.  I'm pretty sure Energy Transfer is the most powerful single-target attack a player can get.  Maybe it was due to me playing solo most of the time, but I didn't mind the slow animations or weak AoE, not when I could hit enemies with the 3.56 scale (with guaranteed Mag 3 Stun) Total Focus or the 4.56 scale (with 60% Mag 3 Stun chance) Energy Transfer.  (Her name wasn't "Ms. Stungun" for nothing.  She was almost always surrounded by enemies, even Bosses, staggering about in a daze)

My main was an EM stalker, and by game's end I had him tricked out five near-sets of of Kinetic Combat, making sure to slot the knock-down proc in them all (I could have gone for one of the non-procs, but it was just too good to pass up.  Sometimes when teaming, EM had me landing what appeared to be a really devastating blow on someone who died just a second ago, so in that the set did have it's problems.  On the other hand, as his secondary was Super Reflexes and I had taken Shadow Meld as well, this was a stalker who could tank pretty well.  I don't know enough about the other sets to say for sure, but with all of the above and those stuns and power POWS from EM, he worked out really well.  And yet I never did get him to 50... I was afraid doing so so, since he was my main, would swomehow jinx the game; then when the axe fell, it was too depressing to do so.

Quote from: Clave_Dark_5 on August 04, 2014, 11:29:59 AM
My main was an EM stalker, and by game's end I had him tricked out five near-sets of of Kinetic Combat, making sure to slot the knock-down proc in them all (I could have gone for one of the non-procs, but it was just too good to pass up.  Sometimes when teaming, EM had me landing what appeared to be a really devastating blow on someone who died just a second ago, so in that the set did have it's problems.  On the other hand, as his secondary was Super Reflexes and I had taken Shadow Meld as well, this was a stalker who could tank pretty well.  I don't know enough about the other sets to say for sure, but with all of the above and those stuns and power POWS from EM, he worked out really well.  And yet I never did get him to 50... I was afraid doing so so, since he was my main, would swomehow jinx the game; then when the axe fell, it was too depressing to do so.

yeah, I ran into that double-kill bug in the electric sets as well. it could get annoying at times.

Quote from: HEATSTROKE on August 04, 2014, 04:45:16 AM
To this I say ballocks...

I played an Electric Armor/SS Tank and I didnt build for defense at all.. could have.. didnt.. and even without defense backing it up it was one of the most survivable tanks I had.. My favorite moment on a 16 man BAF.. everyone wiped except me..

Me.. Nightstar, Seige and the 9CUs.. and I lived just fine...

Now maybe thats because my build had Perma Energize.. and I could time Power Surge really well..

Well that and the BAF is great for Electric Armor; almost all energy damage, so it was "your" resist  damage type.  Try tanking on a MoM trial...much harder heh.


Going back to some of the original posts (just reading them now)....I never cared for Ice Control that much because the lack of actual control in the primary set itself.  Especially against those Nemesis robots that didn't get knocked down. :( 

I'll have to say that there were only a few powersets that I never played (or got the chance to do so).  Energy Melee, Ice Control (to a degree) are the two that jump out to me...I'm sure there are a few others...

Oh and Nature Control...of course it 'just came out' when CoH closed, so never fully played that either.  :(

 actually Elec has very good resists to Psi..

and I tanked with an Inv tank on more that one occasion against Psi enemies and didnt get shredded to pieces.. Its all about how you build the tank.. and even without defense.. you can make a tank survive most circumstances

Quote from: blacksly on August 04, 2014, 03:19:22 AM
Traps is uber.

Not so much on teams, actually... the playstyle doesn't work as well into teams, and the timing for some of the powers is not very good for fast-rolling teams (although, at that point, it doesn't greatly matter), but it's still decent on teams. It provides AoE Defense and Status Protection as defensive stats, Caltrops to keep enemies away from the squishies at the rear, the Suicide Drones as enemy debuffs, and Acid Mortar to increase damage. Not as good a suite of tools as some of the other sets, and not as convenient to use.

But for soloing, it's one of the best buff/debuff sets. You control the timing and setup, getting Status Protection is great for soloing squishies (and with good +Def also), and Acid Mortar is a lot more useful when soloing since it has a small AoE so it works better on smaller spawns, and it can be slotted with Damage Procs for more damage, but the damage is pretty much inconsequential on teams. Poison Trap is also not much use on teams, but superb when soloing (and it enables you to solo AVs relatively easily).

This is exactly what I wanted to hear, thanks!!!  I would probably solo mostly on this character (hopefully will get to) so this fits the bill.

I think an important factor in some sets' "underrated-ness" was that they had long-standing issues that finally got addressed, but the damage to the set's reputation was never repaired.  Exhibit A for that is Electric Armor with Energize.

Exhibit B: Ice Melee.  I forget exactly when Frozen Aura got changed to do a nice chunk of damage, but from the time it got fixed right up until shutdown, I'd hear people saying things like, "Why would you play a set with a T9 power that does no damage?". You try and explain to them that you're not, but after a while, well, you're just shouting at the tide.  If they had ever actually fixed Greater Ice Sword, I think IM would have become a set that paralyzed me with too many good options.  :)

My experience in COH was aided when I met a guy who became a good friend, who made me realize that what most people claimed were "bad powersets" were more often "atypical sets, played badly."  His main Blaster was Energy/Energy, who used a ton of knockback, but where others used it as a sledgehammer, his used a scalpel.

Later on,
Gen

I think /Poison deserves some love. I don't even remember seeing anyone with this set.

Quote from: Gatecrasher on August 20, 2014, 04:04:31 PM
I think an important factor in some sets' "underrated-ness" was that they had long-standing issues that finally got addressed, but the damage to the set's reputation was never repaired.  Exhibit A for that is Electric Armor with Energize.

Exhibit B: Ice Melee.  I forget exactly when Frozen Aura got changed to do a nice chunk of damage, but from the time it got fixed right up until shutdown, I'd hear people saying things like, "Why would you play a set with a T9 power that does no damage?". You try and explain to them that you're not, but after a while, well, you're just shouting at the tide.  If they had ever actually fixed Greater Ice Sword, I think IM would have become a set that paralyzed me with too many good options.  :)

My experience in COH was aided when I met a guy who became a good friend, who made me realize that what most people claimed were "bad powersets" were more often "atypical sets, played badly."  His main Blaster was Energy/Energy, who used a ton of knockback, but where others used it as a sledgehammer, his used a scalpel.

Later on,
Gen

The other thing that got "fixed" on the Ice Melee set was Frost's range and arc.

And you're right, it was a fine set after the fixes. Most of the attacks were fast and the ice patch was just awesome.

I had a Dark/Ice tank and was planning a Bio/Ice using Sorcery tank that would have been very nice.

I forget exactly how the timeline played out, but my initial IM tank was WP/Ice, created right when Willpower came out (at its launch, so many people were just pairing WP up with the other set released at the same time, Dual Blades, that my pick of Ice Melee was about 90% fueled by contrarianism).  I think Frozen Aura got its fix after I started Snowbrawl, but before I hit 38, so suddenly I was all, "Wait, I have a choice now?" :)

When I inevitably put a guy on Champion server for Tanker Tuesdays, that positive experience with Ice Melee made me roll up a Shield/Ice, and hoo-boy was he fun.  Got up to like, high 30s or low 40s when the hammer dropped.

Ahh, the good old days...

Later on,
Gate

Quote from: Gatecrasher on August 20, 2014, 05:13:12 PM
I forget exactly how the timeline played out, but my initial IM tank was WP/Ice, created right when Willpower came out (at its launch, so many people were just pairing WP up with the other set released at the same time, Dual Blades, that my pick of Ice Melee was about 90% fueled by contrarianism).  I think Frozen Aura got its fix after I started Snowbrawl, but before I hit 38, so suddenly I was all, "Wait, I have a choice now?" :)

When I inevitably put a guy on Champion server for Tanker Tuesdays, that positive experience with Ice Melee made me roll up a Shield/Ice, and hoo-boy was he fun.  Got up to like, high 30s or low 40s when the hammer dropped.

Ahh, the good old days...

Later on,
Gate

I made a WP/Ice Melee tanker too. ;)   She was sturdy enough but was definitely lacking in damage heh. 

And /poison was a good set but not the best in pve (was great in pvp as I saw it used more in pvp).

Quote from: Ironwolf on July 31, 2014, 06:13:35 PM
Sonic/Ice blasters.

I could chain sleep bosses and in some cases even AV's! I had -def attacks and a group knockback (with the right IO - knockdown). Ice patch and so many good powers. I used to run mine at +4 x 8 solo.

I tanked Recluse once when our tank went down. I was able to pull him off the rest of the team, then debuff and slow him enough with all my controls that I survived until the tank was rezzed and back in the game. Then I stuck with the tank until we wiped him out and the tank never dropped again.

Aggro an extra group? No problem - drop snowstorm and keep knocking them down and chain sleep them untill they die.

Nice trick. I always thought /ice on a blaster was better than advertised.

I have visions of this kind of thing for a NA/Psi defender. No sleeps, but between the -Dam and -Rech along with all the other goodies it should be quite sturdy.

I dearly loved Trick Arrow.  That was one of the best debuff sets ever, hands down.  It got even better when dealing with large mobs, like on the ITF, because so many of the debuffs were AOE.  However, it was still amazing at anything debuff wise. 

One of the proudest moments I ever had was taking out Reichsman on Kahn's TF with just four of us.  The others had all left early, and we decided to stick it out to see if we could do it.  One tank, one scrapper, one blaster, and my TA/Archery Defender.  No heals.  It was beautiful.  Vi was able to handle not just the debuffing but the crowd control and even help with damage.  Reichs went down right as we used the last charge on our Dimensional Grounding Ray. 

I'd take TA over Rad any day for debuffing.  Not slighting rad, because it's amazing at what it does too, but I just played so much with TA that I was more comfortable with using it.  It's my pick for most underrated powerset.

My mains were all elec. An Elec/elec blastr, elec/elec Dom, Elec/elec brute... elec/shield scrapper with a shield that looked like it was made out of electricity...

People really underestimated Elec in PvE. Sure, it did lower damage, but it was amazing AOE. I could, as a blaster, use a combo, fly into the middle of enemies, and kill the, before they got enough Endurance to actually do anything.

It's true some enemy groups didnt even care about END, but those mean nasty Harpies of Vengance, Rikti, Praetorians, high leveled devouring earth... they all cared!

I tanked every piece of incarnate content with my Brute, including each run of a MoLAM. It really thrilled me to hear people saying how weak Elec armor was just to pull that off without a hitch. I only ever even used my electrical body once just to take a nova strike from Praetor Barry White so I could say "Now, see, that's how I survive one, so please actually try to dodge the next one!"

Elec control was a biiit frustrating admittedly, because its neat chain confusion would always be interrupted by someone killing all of those affected. Much like sleep, confusion is one of those things where it works really well solo, but in groups you often find yourself sighing and shaking your head.

Quote from: blacksly on July 18, 2014, 03:00:46 PM
Sonic was not so much underRATED as disliked by a lot of players. The graphics were not really interesting, the sounds were annoying, and the gameplay with it was largely boring. It was effective but boring, much like Force Fields. So the Sonics that you see would be effective, but you wouldn't see many of them.

A surprising synergy I found was Sonic Control and Psi Blast.  Between slowing the enemy's recharge and increasing my team's damage resistance it was almost like proactive healing.

Quote from: wyldhunt on August 02, 2014, 03:53:33 AM
Eoraptor, Charged Mastermind, may I direct your attention to here (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,9810.msg141746.html#msg141746)? Please peruse The Amber Fist's build - my actual in-game build at shutdown, and my first fully-incarnated character, advanced within a few weeks after each incarnate content expansion was released. Yes, notice only 9.7% Toxic resist. However, many non-Vahzilok Toxic attacks also include Lethal or Smashing, so please note the 45.2% Def to S/L. No, no DDR, but then please note the Regen/Healing/HP available. Then pair it with the KB from the Stone Melee (supported by the End tools in ElecArmor). Yes, the Vahzilok missions in Faultine were interesting, but doable (it's hard to vomit when you're KB'd). Later on I took The Amber Fist through many Arachnos and Arachnoid missions with nary a hiccup. If built in certain ways and with certain powerset combos, ElecArmor was a king of layered mitigation, and had some nice QoL too.

Supermax, the reason some min-maxers gave me as to why ElecArmor wasn't as good: "it's pure resist, and will get creamed without Def to back it up." That could be true, which is why I IO'd for S/L Def softcap, and paired it with Stone Melee (a set seemingly tailor-made for ElecArmor). There were some other ElecArmor believers as well - I saw them on the forums and in-game. I also liked Elec Melee, however I never quite got an Armor to gel well with it - maybe I'll try again next chance we get (keeping up hope!).

I had an elec/ss tank who mowed through mobs ridiculously easily.  It felt like I was cheating.  I'd fight purple Malta, DE and Rikti for a challenge.

Sonic was always a set that people over looked.When we ran all def or troller teams and we had 2 or 3 sonics the mobs just fell.Traps was another,it did well on AV's and solo.I had a traps/thugs which did very well.While the mobs were kept busy with all my pets,traps did the real work :)

Kind of tardy to the party, but my two were Dark Armor and Ice Armor.  They were late bloomers, but were amazing once you got around 30.  I should also note that I always built my tanks for maximum defense, neglecting nearly all offensive capability in exchange for controls and team coverage.

Ice Armor always seemed a bit squishier early on, especially considering your only self-heal was a long CD Dull Pain.  This made wading into alpha strikes kind of a painful experience early on.  That is until you unlocked Energy Absorption.  Hop into the middle of a big group, and pop that bad boy, and you're deflecting everything they're throwing at you.  Not to mention, the super-short CD meant you never really ran out of endurance again.  Couple that with Hibernate a few levels later, tack on a control-heavy attack set like Earth, and you were dang hard to kill.

Speaking of endurance issues...  Dark Armor was hands-down my favorite set to play with as a tanker.  Yes, it went through endurance faster than Takeru Kobayashi goes through hot dogs, but what you got in return was something magical.  Once you got SOs and were able to (at least) two-slot the armors with End Redux and do the same with the heal, you were set for life.  My Dark/Ice tanker hardly ever died after getting SOs.  Herd a big group together, drop Ice Patch, and watch as the helpless fools are either slipping and falling, cowering at your feet from Cloak of Fear, or walking around in a stupor from Oppressive Gloom.  Which doesn't even touch on your massive resists to pretty much every damage type in the game.

Cold Domination was great buff and debuff set that I felt was overshadowed by more popular sets like Radiation Emission and Kinetics.

DA/Ice worked very well together and tanker /Ice should be on your list of underrated powersets, imo.

For me, Trick Arrow and Kin Melee were two of the more underrated sets. 

I had two TA/ defenders and both were very good. One was TA/Ice and the other TA/Sonic.
Everyone was concerned with the redraw on  TA but most of the time you unloaded arrows and then went to blast, so there was only one or two redraws in a fight.
The only irritating thing about the set was the end usage on it considering the recharges involved, but that was mostly a conceptual irritation (you are firing arrows, how tiring is that for a hero?).

My other nomination would be Kin Melee. It had a very tasty -Dam component in its powers that made it a natural fit for any melee character. It also had an elongated time on it's build up (Power Siphon) which allowed it to hit harder over the long term than it looked like it was. The damage really added up.

 I cant see how Ice Armor was underrated.. I would say if anything it wasnt appreciated. Ice armor could easily be one of the most survivable tank sets if built even halfway decently.

Quote from: HEATSTROKE on September 17, 2014, 12:21:38 AM
I cant see how Ice Armor was underrated.. I would say if anything it wasnt appreciated. Ice armor could easily be one of the most survivable tank sets if built even halfway decently.

At the end of the game.
Early in the game, they used a different calculation for To-Hit vs Defense, and without going into great details, what happened was that as you fought higher-con mobs (+4 and up), they started to hit (and thus damage) you A LOT more. So you suffered for fighting more difficult mobs far more than other Tankers. I forget in which issue this was fixed (I4, maybe? maybe even later?), but Ice Tankers deserved their reputation for being weaker than other defense sets, for a long while. It was only until IOs allowed them to start adding to their defenses, that they really became a good set.

In addition, in the early times, there was The Set to be Nerfed Later (Regen), Invuln's ability to tank the entire Warwolf mission, Granite Armor, and Fire Aura had the original PowerLevellingRUs version of Burn. So besides the fact that Ice Armor was a lot worse at the time just on its own merits, the other sets were pretty much OP in defensive measures, so it looked even worse by comparison. It deserved its bad reputation, and it took a while to shed it.

Quote from: blacksly on September 17, 2014, 11:50:58 PMI forget in which issue this was fixed (I4, maybe? maybe even later?)

Issue 7.  Using a system similar to one I first proposed on the forums in Issue 2.

Quote from: Arcana on September 18, 2014, 01:57:02 AM
Issue 7.  Using a system similar to one I first proposed on the forums in Issue 2.

yeah, i started Fug li, my icetank in i4, and immediately noticed I seemed to draw mobs like ants at an all-honey picnic.

Quote from: Ankhammon on September 16, 2014, 06:31:36 PMMy other nomination would be Kin Melee. It had a very tasty -Dam component in its powers that made it a natural fit for any melee character. It also had an elongated time on it's build up (Power Siphon) which allowed it to hit harder over the long term than it looked like it was. The damage really added up.

Because it was unconventional, most people used bad math to estimate Power Siphon's strength.  In actuality, it was something like twice as good as Build Up on average.  Highly underrated.

Quote from: Arcana on September 18, 2014, 02:59:18 AM
Because it was unconventional, most people used bad math to estimate Power Siphon's strength.  In actuality, it was something like twice as good as Build Up on average.  Highly underrated.

I love Kin Mele.. found the sounds and the whirling animation annoying..

Quote from: HEATSTROKE on September 18, 2014, 03:09:26 AM
I love Kin Mele.. found the sounds and the whirling animation annoying..

Yeah, Kinetic Melee was so fun I too found myself unable to stop twirling around and making whoosh-whoosh sounds sometimes myself.

Underrated...Try a Dark Melee/Elec Armor Brute. I did mine before they made energize (IIRC) and used DM to give me a heal move (Siphon Life). I had ridiculous END thanks to Dark Consumption + Conserve Power (now energize) + Power Sink, decent heals/+regen (Siphon Life and Energize), Some added defense in the -ToHit attacks from DM, pretty good PBAoE attacks and a solid ST chain for killin hard targets (a couple with Smash+Neg dmg, a couple with STRAIGHT NEG dmg only). That lil dude was VERY fun, but never needed him to fake tank (Our SG leader was a Fire/SS tanker).

I tried a Shield/DM tank once to try and get some decent +DMG buffs but if the game opens again, I may reroll her as a Scrapper or a Brute to see if killing faster is equal to increased survivability.

Quote from: brothermutant on September 20, 2014, 04:32:06 AM
Underrated...Try a Dark Melee/Elec Armor Brute. I did mine before they made energize (IIRC) and used DM to give me a heal move (Siphon Life). I had ridiculous END thanks to Dark Consumption + Conserve Power (now energize) + Power Sink, decent heals/+regen (Siphon Life and Energize), Some added defense in the -ToHit attacks from DM, pretty good PBAoE attacks and a solid ST chain for killin hard targets (a couple with Smash+Neg dmg, a couple with STRAIGHT NEG dmg only). That lil dude was VERY fun, but never needed him to fake tank (Our SG leader was a Fire/SS tanker).

I tried a Shield/DM tank once to try and get some decent +DMG buffs but if the game opens again, I may reroll her as a Scrapper or a Brute to see if killing faster is equal to increased survivability.

I have to say DM was never really underrated, it was always considered at least a good if not great set.  Electric Armor was rated low before energize, but honestly it was low performing before energize.  Not that any melee defensive secondary was rubbish, but it had the lowest survivability of any other set.  In fact, in my defensive secondaries spreadsheet I used to make and release it was one of the only sets that for some damage types it was actually less survivable than someone who *rested*.  Even with rest's -defense and -resist debuff which made everything hit you 95% of the time and deal 4x the damage, the regeneration of rest outperformed the mitigation of Electric Armor.

I actually tested this because I didn't trust the calculations, and proved it to be true.  It was partially that result that caused the devs to decide to buff the set (because no set should be worse than rest, jeez).

Quote from: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 07:33:45 AM
I actually tested this because I didn't trust the calculations, and proved it to be true.  It was partially that result that caused the devs to decide to buff the set (because no set should be worse than rest, jeez).

And... instead of proposing a new Couch Potato defensive powerset, you had them buff Electric Armor instead?

I don't know too much about the melee sets, I'm more of a support player.

It always seemed to me that Storm Summoning got the short straw because people only saw KB chaos, and Earth Control didn't seem flashy enough to let other players know what the controller was doing for their benefit.

I always thought FF was underrepresented as a support power. It had some decent powers in there (Force Bolt alone was enough to allow me to solo safely till I got my dispersion bubble). The team shields gave decent def to LOTS of things (including positional), just not psi or Toxic, BUT one gave unslottable res to Toxic and the other gave protection from -End/-recov attacks. PFF (your own personal hamster bubble) was another nice lil power to have for newbies that didn't know to run into a bad area you aren't prepared for. And disp bubble was great at giving mez protection (however, since no SLEEP MAG protection, I always seemed to get slept ASAP by bad guys). Never liked Detention field, Repulsion field or bomb, or Force Bubble, but that was ok by me, it gave me access to power pools I would have never tried. If they were to change the powerset at all, I thought some of the effects that TIME got should have been used in FF (slow fields and hold fields, etc).

Because I didn't need all those other powers, I had really flexible builds. I just wish you could bubble yourself, BUT if you had any kind of attacking pet (trollers and MMs had plenty, and some epics gave one as well), you could really protect those lil goobers if you bubbled them and kept them in your Dispersion field. I know many MMs that rolled Bots/FF just to get HUGE defenses for themselves AND their bots. Made them freaky tank-like toons. I even saw one take done a GM solo (well, with his Minions) and I was HIGHLY impressed.

Quote from: blacksly on September 20, 2014, 12:39:32 PM
And... instead of proposing a new Couch Potato defensive powerset, you had them buff Electric Armor instead?

It was that or nerf Rest for making Electric Armor feel bad.

Quote from: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 11:28:15 PM
It was that or nerf Rest for making Electric Armor feel bad.

Should have made a whole powerset out of it:
Rest
Relax
Lounge Around
Taking it Easy
Power Nap
Infectious Yawn
Sleep
Sandman
Unconsciousness

Quote from: blacksly on September 21, 2014, 12:38:34 AM
Should have made a whole powerset out of it:
Rest
Relax
Lounge Around
Taking it Easy
Power Nap
Infectious Yawn
Sleep
Sandman
Unconsciousness

This set is flawed. It needs a "Turn on Golf match" which will make Power Nap twice as effective.

Quote from: blacksly on September 21, 2014, 12:38:34 AM
Should have made a whole powerset out of it:
Rest
Relax
Lounge Around
Taking it Easy
Power Nap
Infectious Yawn
Sleep
Sandman
Unconsciousness

And I think you forgot Siesta.
;D

Quote from: Ankhammon on September 21, 2014, 12:41:46 AM
This set is flawed. It needs a "Turn on Golf match" which will make Power Nap twice as effective.

Also, the devs would never allow us to stack Rest.

Quote from: brothermutant on September 20, 2014, 07:13:50 PM
I always thought FF was underrepresented as a support power. It had some decent powers in there (Force Bolt alone was enough to allow me to solo safely till I got my dispersion bubble). The team shields gave decent def to LOTS of things (including positional), just not psi or Toxic, BUT one gave unslottable res to Toxic and the other gave protection from -End/-recov attacks.

Well, thanks to the positional (melee/ranged/aoe) defense, it still protected against most toxic/psychic attacks anyway.

Very strong defensive support set, just didn't do much outside of that.  No offensive buffs or debuffs.

I had a Ice/Fire tank that was pure fun to play even before IO's. I solo'd him from 35 or was it 39-45 in the Rikti Crash Site. People would always be surprised by the combo for some odd reason. That was Jan 2006 when I first started playing.  I had heard that it was more popular when the game first launched but then it seemed to not be used much by the time I started playing.
I had a Fire/Elec Dom or was it Elec/Fire (the power set with fire imps).I don't remember seeing anyone with that combo.
I also had a Ice/Ice /Fire blaster which became very fun around 25 and a WP/SM , SM/WP tank and brute.
I always made my toons with a theme in mind. One of my favorites was my PB/WS. They were twin brothers but one brother actually joined up to become a WS by accident. He wasn't the brightest of the two but ended up being the stronger of the two.
Sorry starting to ramble.

Quote from: P51mus on September 21, 2014, 03:14:55 AM
Well, thanks to the positional (melee/ranged/aoe) defense, it still protected against most toxic/psychic attacks anyway.

Very strong defensive support set, just didn't do much outside of that.  No offensive buffs or debuffs.

This, but with a caveat - very strong defensive support set from 1-49 (and freshly dinged 50) - after that, assuming most people had decent IO slotting, the +def FF gave was damn near redundant.  Otherwise, you had the mez protection Dispersion gave, and....Force Bolt?

On a team of well-built 50's, FF was damn near a waste.  My 1st 50 was a FF/Rad Def, and I found myself playing it less and less as IO sets became more prevalent throughout the endgame.  I simply was not bringing enough to the table to warrant bringing that toon.  Nearly any other Defender was a better addition to the team.  But as said, while leveling or pre-IO's, FF was very, very handy to have along.

Definitely a set that could have used a Dev revisiting post-IO's and widespread self soft-capping.  Someone earlier mentioned something interesting - maybe removing all the repulsion powers save Force Bolt and change them to slows?  Something else?  Anything, really.  After the +def, FF didn't bring anything useful to a team - the toons that could use the +def and/or +mez protection generally didn't need it as the mobs were either dead or busy attacking someone built to have mobs attacking them (or well off on their own that the +def wasn't necessarily needed).

I'm probably coming late to this realization or perhaps I've just forgotten, but I don't recall reading much of Arcana's stuff on the old forums* and now I'm being blown away by her insight into all the sets and how they did or didn't work.  I'm tempted to scroll through everything she's posting now about powersets and to take notes - you know, just in case the game does come back.  We should add an "Aracana Notes" section to all the wiki pages that cover something she'd posted about...



*Except the guide to Ill/Rad Controllers, that guide talked me into making one.

Trick Arrow was a big one, Robots/Trick arrow MM was a monster to see in action if played right.

In terms of Earth Control, it had upsides and downsides, I made an Earth/Empathy Controller build around support that could do sickening things...soloing was slow with her but she was never ever in danger..and she could Mez Avs on her own.

Also I had a merc/storm mastermind...she was also much  more than I thought she would be ((-KB gernades + Tornado was evil))

I always thought Earth control was overlooked because of the annoying large rocks around everything. Couldn't you almost get pinned as a melee character in the middle of the group?

Quote from: brothermutant on September 21, 2014, 02:36:54 PM
I always thought Earth control was overlooked because of the annoying large rocks around everything. Couldn't you almost get pinned as a melee character in the middle of the group?

No, the rocks didn't block movement. What they COULD do, though, is block vision. With a lot of them, you were attacking random stones.

Oh that makes sense. I always went with Grav or Illusion or Mind Controller. They all were extremely clean looking.

Quote from: P51mus on September 21, 2014, 03:14:55 AM
Well, thanks to the positional (melee/ranged/aoe) defense, it still protected against most toxic/psychic attacks anyway.

Very strong defensive support set, just didn't do much outside of that.  No offensive buffs or debuffs.

That's right, I forgot. But why some and not all? Were there some that didn't register as positional?

Personally, I NEVER liked the Enemy bubble that locked down one baddie for a decent clip of time. But one teammate used to use it when our tank was less than impressive to lock down the boss/AV until we cleared the room. It did make those team-ups so much easier.

And I swear Force Bolt was so much fun to use. Everyone used to whine about KB, but there was a really good forum post about KB and using it to your team's advantage. Kinda like playing pool, shoot the straggler back into the AoEs or near the melee toons. Or juggle a boss until you are ready to murder (er...arrest) him.

 Underrated...

  Blasters and Dominators... period..

Quote from: HEATSTROKE on September 22, 2014, 02:19:55 AM
Underrated...

  Blasters and Dominators... period..

Don't tell my wife... she played the Blapper style so much that when CoV went live and Doms first came out they were a cakewalk...

Quote from: HEATSTROKE on September 22, 2014, 02:19:55 AM
Underrated...

  Blasters and Dominators... period..

Well if we are talking whole ATs..

Dominators and Stalkers, especially post Inherent modifications the boosted damage out of Domination and the new Assassin Strike mechanics were so good.

Blasters were that way in I-24, oh it is a shame we can't get an I-24 server..blasters were soo much better with the sustainability buffs and the short cast snipes.

Quote from: brothermutant on September 21, 2014, 04:04:36 PM
That's right, I forgot. But why some and not all? Were there some that didn't register as positional?

There's a handful of psychic and toxic attacks that are pure psychic/toxic, no positional.  I can't remember all of them, but I think most of the psychic ones are mind control powers (which malaise happens to use, and a few other enemies).

Quote from: P51mus on September 23, 2014, 12:02:05 AM
There's a handful of psychic and toxic attacks that are pure psychic/toxic, no positional.  I can't remember all of them, but I think most of the psychic ones are mind control powers (which malaise happens to use, and a few other enemies).

The Yellow Ink Men, Lost and the Rikti are the critter groups that come to mind as doing decent non-positional psi damage.  Yes, nearly all of them were based on Mind Control-like powers.  The most common non-mind control non-positional psi attack (that did damage) that comes to mind are variations of Blind.  Master Illusionists were particularly adept at slinging an aweful lot of non-positional psi for that reason.  Also, most confuse-like powers tended to be typed non-positional psi.

Most players thought if an attack was not positionally typed, it was going to be either psionic or toxic (although toxic attack typing itself wasn't introduced until very late in the game and rarely used).  An interesting trivia question I would occasionally pose on the forums was to ask if anyone could name a reasonably common attack that was not positionally typed, but was not psionically typed either (but was not completely untyped either).  It did not have to deal damage.

Taunt?

Quote from: Phaetan on September 23, 2014, 12:49:11 AM
Taunt?

Taunt wasn't generally untyped, and it was rare to experience outside of PvP.

That would explain why I lost my togs every time I was attacked with a  sleep move, was probably a Psi only attack without a positional tag to it. Way to make FF LAME. That had to be the dumbest idea they had.

Quote from: brothermutant on September 23, 2014, 03:46:17 PM
That would explain why I lost my togs every time I was attacked with a  sleep move, was probably a Psi only attack without a positional tag to it. Way to make FF LAME. That had to be the dumbest idea they had.

More a case of the left hand not talking to the right hand.  Its obvious the different devs that originally worked on the different character and critter powers were not in sync.  At launch the description for SR was that it avoided everything, that SR's mental discipline could even avoid psionic attacks.  The dev who made SR gave it melee, ranged, and AoE defense because that's obviously everything.  But then the guy who made the mental attacks made them typed psionic only because he decided that attack obviously isn't protected against by melee specific defenses, ranged specific defenses, and if it only affected one thing it wasn't an AoE.  It was a mind to mind attack that didn't have a positional aspect.  The combination of those two decisions demonstrates that the conceptual framework for attack typing didn't exist at launch - in other words, what exactly does it mean for something to be a melee attack or defend against ranged attacks.

That's why I always used to preach that you have to know what your numbers mean: if you only spreadsheet them around with formulas without understanding the practical reality of the numbers you'll always get in trouble.  To be honest, even after the devs started multi-typing defenses they *still* were doing that for purely ad hoc reasons.  There was never, from launch to shutdown, a clear definition of what the types actually meant, beyond the purely mathematical.

Quote from: Arcana on September 23, 2014, 07:05:32 PM
More a case of the left hand not talking to the right hand.  Its obvious the different devs that originally worked on the different character and critter powers were not in sync.  At launch the description for SR was that it avoided everything, that SR's mental discipline could even avoid psionic attacks.  The dev who made SR gave it melee, ranged, and AoE defense because that's obviously everything.  But then the guy who made the mental attacks made them typed psionic only because he decided that attack obviously isn't protected against by melee specific defenses, ranged specific defenses, and if it only affected one thing it wasn't an AoE.  It was a mind to mind attack that didn't have a positional aspect.  The combination of those two decisions demonstrates that the conceptual framework for attack typing didn't exist at launch - in other words, what exactly does it mean for something to be a melee attack or defend against ranged attacks.

That's why I always used to preach that you have to know what your numbers mean: if you only spreadsheet them around with formulas without understanding the practical reality of the numbers you'll always get in trouble.  To be honest, even after the devs started multi-typing defenses they *still* were doing that for purely ad hoc reasons.  There was never, from launch to shutdown, a clear definition of what the types actually meant, beyond the purely mathematical.

Can you slap the WoW development team with that? they got the moronic idea in their brains lately that "Too much information is bad and confuses players"

Quote from: ryuplaneswalker on September 23, 2014, 11:20:40 PM
Can you slap the WoW development team with that? they got the moronic idea in their brains lately that "Too much information is bad and confuses players"

Too much information can sometimes confuse players, or make them focus on the numbers to the detriment of enjoying the game.  However, I've always been of the opinion that if knowledge of your game systems confuses your players, you designed them wrong.

If I were engineering the game systems for an MMO today, I would start by asking myself this question: "how do I want to explain how this works?" and then I would design the game systems to match that description.  All it takes is good command of math and an engineering perspective to make the machine fit the human rather than vice versa, and game mechanics are really just a machine that can be designed to fit the brain of the players.

Game mechanics should be like the SR passive resistances.  Trivially easy to explain (the lower your health, the higher the resistance), straight-forward math ( [60-H]/60 * 25 ), and yet fiendishly complicated to min/max (to date, no one - not even me - has come up with a precise way to value those powers under all game conditions, because the survivability calculations are easy to average, difficult to precisely quantify, and subtly non-linear).  Its easy to get an intuitive feel for what they do, but very difficult to calculate what they are worth.

That's a mark of good game design.  Players with no math skills can still get the basic idea, while min/max smart-alecs get tossed into the very deep end of the pool.  Imagine if most of the game worked like that.

Of course, the main problem with this design ethic is that you have to be smarter than the majority of your players.  Otherwise, the min/max smart-alecs will smack you silly.  For example, that's what the CoH players did with the devs when it came to optimal attack chains (due in some measure to my hating the DPS calculations on the forums and trying to replace them with a DPA-centric view of attacks), because we were collectively way ahead of them there.  As a general rule, Monte Carlo Markov analysis comes in handy here.

If there is a problem I've seen in all the MMOs I've played, its that the math seems to have been created for its own sake, by Excel jockeys with no sense of systems engineering, and with no intention of being explainable. 

Quote from: Arcana on September 23, 2014, 12:43:48 AMMost players thought if an attack was not positionally typed, it was going to be either psionic or toxic (although toxic attack typing itself wasn't introduced until very late in the game and rarely used).  An interesting trivia question I would occasionally pose on the forums was to ask if anyone could name a reasonably common attack that was not positionally typed, but was not psionically typed either (but was not completely untyped either).  It did not have to deal damage.

I dunno if you'd consider it reasonably common, but fearsome stare of darkness control / dark miasma is only negative typed, no positional.  I can only remember that because I loved dark miasma/control.

Quote from: ryuplaneswalker on September 23, 2014, 11:20:40 PM
Can you slap the WoW development team with that? they got the moronic idea in their brains lately that "Too much information is bad and confuses players"

They must be taking advice from Jack Emmeret.

Quote from: P51mus on September 28, 2014, 07:59:37 PM
I dunno if you'd consider it reasonably common, but fearsome stare of darkness control / dark miasma is only negative typed, no positional.  I can only remember that because I loved dark miasma/control.

Winner.  It was not common for someone to come up with that on the game forums.  When PvP first came out and they were testing it, my perma-Elude MA/SR feared only two things really: Illusion Controllers and Dark Defenders.  Both pack mezzes that could trivially incapacitate me permanently: Blind was non-positional and could easily overwhelm PB, and Fearsome Stare was non-positional and SR has no fear protection.  Being perma-mezzed a lot by those two powers made it easy for me to remember them.

Quote from: Arcana on September 29, 2014, 08:08:08 AM
Winner.  It was not common for someone to come up with that on the game forums.  When PvP first came out and they were testing it, my perma-Elude MA/SR feared only two things really: Illusion Controllers and Dark Defenders.  Both pack mezzes that could trivially incapacitate me permanently: Blind was non-positional and could easily overwhelm PB, and Fearsome Stare was non-positional and SR has no fear protection.  Being perma-mezzed a lot by those two powers made it easy for me to remember them.

Indeed, my first main was Radiation/Dark Defender, The Toggles Melted AVs, Dark blast debuffed the crap out of non AVs..and Fallout + Vengeance was the ace in the hole that ended any fight.

Quote from: Arcana on September 29, 2014, 08:08:08 AM
Winner.  It was not common for someone to come up with that on the game forums.  When PvP first came out and they were testing it, my perma-Elude MA/SR feared only two things really: Illusion Controllers and Dark Defenders.  Both pack mezzes that could trivially incapacitate me permanently: Blind was non-positional and could easily overwhelm PB, and Fearsome Stare was non-positional and SR has no fear protection.  Being perma-mezzed a lot by those two powers made it easy for me to remember them.

Funny, I always thought I was behind the 8 ball when on my Dark fender in pvp. One short BF and any mezzes I had were null and my vaunted -tohit was negated by every single aim/BU/pocket EMP (betrayers of their own kind) a player wanted to pull. Even fluffy was so slow as to be more of a non issue than helpful.
There was only one power in the whole set that could be relied upon for protection and that was black hole (the one no one wanted to take) and it got the nerf bat about as quick as a dev could grab a hammer.

When pvp began, every other AT was superior to defenders.

Sure, a stormie could get a stalemate once in a while. I also played Rad, Dark and kin during the early days of pvp and they were all baaaaad. All you could do was debuff on the run and keep running. kills were for others.
And your HP allotment made you the first and easiest target for everything else.

Things started changing with TA (sonic came out at the same time and was meh). Then Ice was a good combo (Ice/Dark was great at POing your opponent). Then the pvp changes and more sets and pvp was ok for a defender to play.

Sorry, but early pvp was so broke it was ridiculous.
In a game where every AT was supposed to feel powerful to have a section of the game where only a couple of powers out of the whole of the defender AT were worthwhile was just sad.

Quote from: Ankhammon on September 29, 2014, 08:00:36 PM
Funny, I always thought I was behind the 8 ball when on my Dark fender in pvp. One short BF and any mezzes I had were null and my vaunted -tohit was negated by every single aim/BU/pocket EMP (betrayers of their own kind) a player wanted to pull. Even fluffy was so slow as to be more of a non issue than helpful.
There was only one power in the whole set that could be relied upon for protection and that was black hole (the one no one wanted to take) and it got the nerf bat about as quick as a dev could grab a hammer.

When pvp began, every other AT was superior to defenders.

Sure, a stormie could get a stalemate once in a while. I also played Rad, Dark and kin during the early days of pvp and they were all baaaaad. All you could do was debuff on the run and keep running. kills were for others.
And your HP allotment made you the first and easiest target for everything else.

Things started changing with TA (sonic came out at the same time and was meh). Then Ice was a good combo (Ice/Dark was great at POing your opponent). Then the pvp changes and more sets and pvp was ok for a defender to play.

Sorry, but early pvp was so broke it was ridiculous.
In a game where every AT was supposed to feel powerful to have a section of the game where only a couple of powers out of the whole of the defender AT were worthwhile was just sad.

Pvp 1.0 was imo about as, change that, not just opinion, it was a bloody fact that pvp 1.0 was just about as bad as pvp 2.0.  It just had different problems.  Pvp 1.0; you had to use specific builds and flight was useless, and it was a chicken-fest(run away all the time after launching some attacks, thats not very in your face, which is what I prefer in pvp).  Pvp 2.0; it was in your face, but then builds were even more limited in it than before, also tried to make archtypes all play identically.  Also all travels were useless in pvp 2.0, but that was done to force an in your face style.

You cannot just make all classes play alike and then make even less builds viable but you also don't want to have movement so fast as to have chicken-fest gameplay.  Anytime I see high speed gameplay lead to people just hit and running all the time, I imagine the gif of a chicken chasing a kid away, only edited with the kid putting up a shield and running with the title UT2k3 over him, and the chicken with the title UT99 over him.  Because the analogy with UT2k3 and UT99 was bloody true.  And CoH pvp 1.0 and pvp 2.0...yeah....only pvp 2.0 was...yeah...just as bad.

Quote from: LaughingAlex on September 29, 2014, 09:04:26 PM
Pvp 1.0 was imo about as, change that, not just opinion, it was a bloody fact that pvp 1.0 was just about as bad as pvp 2.0.  It just had different problems.  Pvp 1.0; you had to use specific builds and flight was useless, and it was a chicken-fest(run away all the time after launching some attacks, thats not very in your face, which is what I prefer in pvp).  Pvp 2.0; it was in your face, but then builds were even more limited in it than before, also tried to make archtypes all play identically.  Also all travels were useless in pvp 2.0, but that was done to force an in your face style.

You cannot just make all classes play alike and then make even less builds viable but you also don't want to have movement so fast as to have chicken-fest gameplay.  Anytime I see high speed gameplay lead to people just hit and running all the time, I imagine the gif of a chicken chasing a kid away, only edited with the kid putting up a shield and running with the title UT2k3 over him, and the chicken with the title UT99 over him.  Because the analogy with UT2k3 and UT99 was bloody true.  And CoH pvp 1.0 and pvp 2.0...yeah....only pvp 2.0 was...yeah...just as bad.

I hear ya on PVP 1.0. It's where I started my loathing of fire blasters in specific and the whole fire set in general.
Honestly, it was never that I truly hated fire sets as much as the braggers who played them. the whole "I'm so awesome" because I can cause good damage and survive when either up against specific sets (AE fire farms) or were only good because of circumstance (had a pocket Emp).
That crowd really drove me away from pvp.

Well, it also bugged me that in order to make a pvp "playable" set you had to get rid of half of your powers so you could get hasten/sj/ss/weave/blah/blah/blah just to last long enough to attempt to do something.

Can't really comment on 2.0 because I simply wouldn't play pvp by then. Did some testing on it when it came out. My AR/Dev blaster buddy could unload on my Sonic/Sonic defender and it would take about 2 or more minutes to kill me. All I did was just stand there.
That may have been my entire experience with pvp 2.0.

Quote from: Ankhammon on September 29, 2014, 08:00:36 PM
Funny, I always thought I was behind the 8 ball when on my Dark fender in pvp.

You probably were, but that's a different matter altogether.

Quote from: Arcana on September 30, 2014, 12:04:47 AM
You probably were, but that's a different matter altogether.

Ouch.

Quote from: HEATSTROKE on July 19, 2014, 07:54:21 PM
after 8 years of playing almost everything.. I cant really think of anything that was underrated to me. Underrated means something that very good that should have been rated higher..

not something I didnt see everyone on the planet playing.. im a game where you have people spread across multiple servers with tons of alts.. you probably are seeing a snapshot every time you play and never the whole picture..

Right.  Virtually any power combo could be played effectively, but some were clearly superior to others (either easier to make effective or better at high end).  With so many of us having double digit level 50's, it was just a matter of which toon you enjoyed playing, and the server culture.  Not sure there were truly "hidden gems" - haven't seen any in this thread that were top end and under-represented, imo.

My SG buddies and I enjoyed making toons with unconventional powersets. I ran with an Inv/Mace tanker (this was well before they buffed Clobber), another guy had a Sonic/Sonic defender, someone else had an Earth/??(empathy, maybe)? controller, and my wife ran an electric/electric blaster. We never set any leveling records or anything, but we always had an awesome time.

But, going to the original point, at one time, */Mace Tankers, Electric/* Blasters, Sonic/* Defenders, and oddly, Earth/* controllers were rarities, relatively speaking.

Quote from: Hagis on March 03, 2015, 01:09:35 AM
My SG buddies and I enjoyed making toons with unconventional powersets. I ran with an Inv/Mace tanker (this was well before they buffed Clobber), another guy had a Sonic/Sonic defender, someone else had an Earth/??(empathy, maybe)? controller, and my wife ran an electric/electric blaster. We never set any leveling records or anything, but we always had an awesome time.

But, going to the original point, at one time, */Mace Tankers, Electric/* Blasters, Sonic/* Defenders, and oddly, Earth/* controllers were rarities, relatively speaking.

Back when I first started playing City of Heroes, and significantly before Issue 1 was released, I used to team with a Ice/Fire tanker.  Back then, you were more likely to see someone claiming to be a Strawberry Shortcake/Boomerang Fish Defender than an Ice/Fire tanker.

People have mentioned traps as underrated and awesome but no one has mentioned the hilarity of phase shift + high recharge + trip mine. Running the last mish of lrsf with multiple traps toons was great - we'd pop back out of phase shift and the rest of the team would barely have to mop up.

Several players hated Assault Rifle/Devices Blasters due to the lack of Build Up/Aim.  I enjoyed it, always having 3-4 Gun Drones at he same time often with 3 Spiderlings and 2 Robotic Drones was pretty fun.  My battle cry was "Rise of the machines!" and the back story was called, "Skynet, the Early Years."  i24 would have made it great with Targeting Drone/Kismet unique making Sniper Rifle a perma insta-snipe.

Quote from: Vee on March 18, 2015, 09:34:16 AM
People have mentioned traps as underrated and awesome but no one has mentioned the hilarity of phase shift + high recharge + trip mine. Running the last mish of lrsf with multiple traps toons was great - we'd pop back out of phase shift and the rest of the team would barely have to mop up.

Are you telling me mines could be set in phase shift and I never knew about it?

Quote from: P51mus on March 19, 2015, 09:15:58 AM
Are you telling me mines could be set in phase shift and I never knew about it?

I did it stealthy on my Arch/Devices all the time.. but no phase shift. Unbound Leap and Super Speed made me invisible enough to drop mines at her feet.

Quote from: P51mus on March 19, 2015, 09:15:58 AM
Are you telling me mines could be set in phase shift and I never knew about it?

Yep, most of your traps bag of tricks could be (sans web grenade). You could get trip mine down to about 4 or 5 seconds. So you could stealth into the mob, phase shift and get 5 or, if you timed it perfectly, 6 trip mines in the mob before it ran out. while you waited on trip mine to recharge you could drop acid mortar, drones, poison trap, ffg, and caltrops, so anything that happened to live through the stacked mines would be already debuffed to hell before its first shot at you. Obviously this was a mostly solo or go-to-the-opposite-end-of-the-map-from-the-team playstyle but it was a fun occasional diversion from the usual mode of play.

What I remember from the real early days - 2004 - was Empathy was a must for a team and if you weren't a defender or controller with empathy, good luck getting on a pick up team. I was on teams where someone would get invited to a team - team channel "Are you a healer?" "no" - KICK!

Or even my toons got kicked off or passed on until I made my Illus / Emp  Doc Heal. Then I was very popular.

Kinetics was way overlooked those early days and later became almost a must have on a team.

Quote from: Vee on March 19, 2015, 08:17:15 PM
Yep, most of your traps bag of tricks could be (sans web grenade). You could get trip mine down to about 4 or 5 seconds. So you could stealth into the mob, phase shift and get 5 or, if you timed it perfectly, 6 trip mines in the mob before it ran out. while you waited on trip mine to recharge you could drop acid mortar, drones, poison trap, ffg, and caltrops, so anything that happened to live through the stacked mines would be already debuffed to hell before its first shot at you. Obviously this was a mostly solo or go-to-the-opposite-end-of-the-map-from-the-team playstyle but it was a fun occasional diversion from the usual mode of play.

couldn't you just use stealth and drop the mines or bombs?

one maybe. it'd go off and aggro even if you didn't draw aggro from the activation.

 Sets that I think might have been underrated.

Energy Aura
Ice Armor

Man so many people mentioning Blasters...I know I left a long time before CoH was shut down, but did they get gutted that hard?  That's rough.  They used to be top tier at everything.



My most underrated has to be Archery (and this may have changed by the end).  Long range, high dps, low cooldown attacks.  Rain of Arrows was monstrous, doing the exact same damage as any other Nova ability, but without taking all of your mana and a lower cooldown.  I love Archery so much.


Trick Arrow had a ton of potential I don't think was ever fully realized either.  I really wish they had got Oil Slick to work with fire as they originally intended.  Heck, they may have and I just didn't know it.

Quote from: FatedTitan on March 28, 2015, 06:17:52 AM
Man so many people mentioning Blasters...I know I left a long time before CoH was shut down, but did they get gutted that hard?  That's rough.  They used to be top tier at everything.



My most underrated has to be Archery (and this may have changed by the end).  Long range, high dps, low cooldown attacks.  Rain of Arrows was monstrous, doing the exact same damage as any other Nova ability, but without taking all of your mana and a lower cooldown.  I love Archery so much.


Trick Arrow had a ton of potential I don't think was ever fully realized either.  I really wish they had got Oil Slick to work with fire as they originally intended.  Heck, they may have and I just didn't know it.

I didn't play TA for a while after it got started, but I'd heard about the non ignite bug. I never saw it. It burned every time I ever tried it. And it was a truly glorious thing to see it burning away (lit up by my origin power) with a blizzard happening right over it.